This here apple and chilli jam really lies somewhere between a chutney and a jam. It’s made from jam ingredients, but in my book jam should be sweet; something you spread on toast of a morning. This is anything but that. READ MORE

Okay so this is a slightly disjointed blog post. I have a few things to tell you. First up, let’s focus on the recipe in hand. That’s most likely why you’re here. So I developed this eton mess butterfly cupcake recipe for Aldi for a little piece they did about street parties. You can watch the video here if you like. I also have the recipes for the sausage rolls and quiche too, but that’ll have to wait for another day. READ MORE

So I overhauled the blog. Did you notice? Do you like it? I am still getting used to it. I may even write a whole blog post just on the reasons why. Like a kind of blog therapy. I do LOVE it, don’t get me wrong. I think it seems a bit whizzy and cool for me. Like when I bought a racing green, soft top car at the age of 27 and kept expecting someone to laugh in my face as I pulled up at the traffic lights. I got pregnant about 6 months later and swapped it for a Skoda so all was well in the world again.

So we’re moving. Yep, almost a year after we saw the house we fell in love with at first sight, the move date it set. I am in full denial mode at the moment. Boxes are mounting up from all our generous and helpful friends, but they remain unfilled. I want to have a huge life laundry style clear out, but it’s oh so hard with little ones. They just need (and want) so much stuff. Mostly plastic. And puzzles. We have a lot of jigsaw puzzles.

As a displacement activity for all this packing (or rather not packing) and blog makeover anxiety I’ve suggested I bake scones for the children’s sports day at school. Three days before we move. How stupid is that? I might make some of these too. They’re summery, no?

I worked with a girl once who literally stopped traffic. Now people overuse the word literally. They literally use it all the time to describe things that literally didn’t happen. However, this actually did.

One day, in the trendy East End of London, as I walked across the road with this girl, traffic stopped for her. She didn’t even notice. I scuttled behind her, trotting in silly heels as she strode purposefully across a busy road as cars ground to a halt. She’d be hateable if it weren’t for the fact this friend of mine is a real girl’s girl. Both funny and clever too. She recently went off the market (AKA got hitched) so East End girls can breathe a sigh of relief whilst East End boys weep.

Anyway, the thing about this girl is that it’s all smoke and mirrors. It’s not that she isn’t a stunner (that sounded a bit red top, but she really is very beautiful), or that she’s not slim or stylish. Tick, tick, tick. The thing is looking that way usually takes a lot of organisation and time. But this girl was deeply disorganised on the grooming front. I sat next to her at work, I should know.

Under her desk were old tights, abandoned before changing for a night out. There was a gym towel streaked with fake tan. There were many pairs of scuffed, seen better days heels. There was a pair of hair straighteners and a well used brush. There was a make up bag covered in the remnants of eyeshadows past. And to top it all off, teetering next to the piles of files balanced precariously next to her keyboard, was a fruit bowl with little tiny fruit flies buzzing around it. Oh and a half eaten bowl of porridge, congealed. Yep, this gorgeous creature was a closet slattern. Makes you love her even more.

Which brings me to this recipe. It’s a slattern’s recipe. I didn’t have anything new to show you as I’ve been a bit busy what with The Book (that’s my book for those of you who have been away for the last 6 weeks and haven’t heard me bang on about it) and The Baby, who is now 9 weeks old. These cupcakes are something I made for the school fayre. They sold out pretty fast, I’m sure due to their white chocolate dribbleness. The other cakes I made did not sell out fast. It was very stressful watching them sit, lonely and ignored. I won’t be making anything other than these for the school fayre, ever again.

Lots more recipes like this in my book, Recipes from a Normal Mum, out now… on Amazon, with The Book People, at Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Waitrose (where it’s book of the month), The Book Depository and many smaller outlets.

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Line a 12-hole muffin tin with paper cases. For the cupcakes, cream the butter/margarine in a bowl until light and fluffy. (Use the flat beater if using your stand mixer.) Add the castor sugar, flour, baking powder, milk, eggs and the zest of the lemon, then mix for about 4 minutes until well combined.

Spoon the mixture into the cases and bake for 15-20 minutes, or until risen and golden-brown and a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. Remove from the oven and set aside to cool for 10 minutes on a wire rack. When the cakes are baking make the drizzle by heating 50g icing sugar with the juice of the lemon in a pan on a medium heat until the sugar crystals dissolve. Remove from the heat, poke lots of holes in the cupcakes with a skewer and carefully pour the lemon syrup over the cupcakes. (You can use a brush to add the drizzle if you prefer). Leave to cool completely.

In the meantime make the buttercream:

In a stand mixer, use the flat beater to cream the butter until soft and light – about 4 minutes. Then add the icing sugar spoon by spoon, mixing on a low speed until all incorporated, then add the vanilla extract. Beat on high for 7 minutes until the buttercream looks like mousse – flecked with air bubbles.

NB: This buttercream can be made using a handheld mixer or a wooden spoon, but it will take a LOT longer. I can’t tell you how long as it completely depends on how hard you beat the mixture and how much you move the mixer about. Look for a mixture similar in texture to mousse with flecks of air running through it. I find it very hard to achieve the same lightness without a stand mixer though – I would employ the strongest person in the house to have a go!

Pop the buttercream into a piping bag fitted with a Wilton 1M nozzle. Once you’re ready to pipe, add a teaspoon of blueberry jam to the centre of one cupcake, then pipe a Mr Whippy swirl around the outside of the cupcake, graduating into the centre to cover the jam. Finish the top of the icing off with 3 blueberries pressed into the peak. Repeat, one at a time until you’ve iced all the cupcakes. If piping is something you find hard take a look at THIS video for my top tips. (And can I just say that I am sure I don’t speak like this… really sure. Do I? Oh I hope not).

Lastly, melt the white chocolate (be very careful doing this as white chocolate burns easily. Either melt in short bursts in the microwave or over a bain marie) and place in a piping bag. Once the white chocolate has cooled to body temperature, snip a tiny corner of the piping bag off and drizzle the cupcakes in a zig zag fashion. This can be quite messy so either do it over newspaper or be prepared to lick, sorry, scrub the table clean.

I’m not immune to the desire to diet in January, but I have always been someone who baulks at following the crowd. So in single years gone by I’ve laughed in the face of abstinence from alcohol, butter, sugar and wheat come January time and instead rather enjoyed the emptier bars cities have to offer, the quicker service and ease of finding a seat to park my ample rear.

This year I find myself pregnant for the first time in the month of January and so I shall consume (almost) whatever I want and worry about losing those pounds at a later, sunnier, salad friendly date. So, I give you my cherry Bakewell inspired cupcakes. You may or may not remember these from the Great British Bake Off, for they are what I baked in the first week when I still retched every time the director shouted ‘action.’

NB: This recipe also appears on the BBC website here in case some of you are thinking you’ve seen it before.

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Line a 12-hole muffin tin with paper cases. For the cupcakes, cream the butter/margarine in a bowl until light and fluffy. (Use the flat beater if using your KitchenAid.) Add the sugar, flour, almonds, baking powder, milk and eggs then mix until well combined.

Spoon the mixture into the cases and bake for 15-20 minutes, or until risen and golden-brown and a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. Remove from the oven and set aside to cool for 10 minutes on a wire rack. For the icing, mix the icing sugar and lemon juice together in a bowl until smooth.

Using an apple corer, carefully remove the middle of the cupcakes and eat/discard. Fill the holes with the raspberry jam using a teaspoon. Carefully spoon the icing onto the top of each cake until the icing reaches the sides of the cake case and top with a cherry. Leave to set before serving.

I’m from Leicester and it’s not somewhere people seem to be proud to be from. Possibly being a Midlands city it suffers from a lack of north/south divide identity tension. We have no-one to hate, to ridicule. So we sit merrily in the middle not being angry about location because we’re quite literally stuck in the middle of things.

Given that I don’t have that puffed up chest ‘I am northern/southern, hear me roar!’ thing going on, I have always embraced my British identity. And there is nothing more British than strawberries and cream. We simply love the stuff don’t we? Make sure you spend the extra on good strawberries for these, they’re the star of the show after all.

Preheat the oven to 180C/gas mark 4 and prepare a 12 hole cupcake tin with cases. Beat the flour, sugar, baking powder, butter, vanilla and eggs using the KitchenAid flatbeater or a wooden spoon until really light in colour and fluffy looking. This takes about 4 minutes in the mixer. Add the freeze dried strawberries and beat in for 30 seconds then divide the mixture into 12 cupcake cases equally. Bake in the centre of the oven for 20 minutes until well risen and a toothpick comes out of the middle of the cakes clean. Leave to cool out of the tin on a wire rack.

Once cool take an apple corer and remove the centre of the sponge from each cupcake. Push the corer in and twist but not all the way to the bottom – you want a little sponge left in the base. Remove the sponge and eat/discard then fill the hole with strawberry jam or EasiYo strawberry fruit squirt. Use a teaspoon if you don’t have a squeezy pouch to use.

Pipe whipped cream on the top and adorn with a ruby red strawberry and there you have it – Britishness in a cupcake. Serve immediately and then keep in the fridge if they’re not all gobbled up.

I’m on a diet. I admit it. I don’t want to be, it’s just that the last 6 months I’ve pretty much eaten whatever I wanted in whatever volume I wanted and the outcome of my little experiment is… that I am not one of those people who can do that and still wear skinny jeans. So I am being very careful and my goodness it’s dull. When I was a teenager I could lose half a stone in a week from eating nothing save apples and black coffee, now I need proper food or I find myself shouting at the children, wincing through the hunger pangs.

As I am being very boring the most I can manage at the moment is maybe one of these little morsels. Very easy to make, much appreciated by husbands, small children and close relatives. You could buy the pastry if you wanted too. If I hosted canapé type parties I’d serve these. Alas, I host pirate parties instead.

This makes 24 little morsels, made in my Wilton tin which I have to say is very good indeed and left not one tart stuck in the tin. (Not paid to say that etc etc.)

Ingredients:

– 360g pastry (I used leftover pastry using this recipe but you could make a half fat to flour mixture using 120g cold butter and 240g plain flour, rub in and pull together with a splash of cold water, rest in the fridge for half an hour and off we go)

– 120g jam of your choice, I chose raspberry

– 360g marzipan, any colour will do

Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4. Take a blob of pastry, about a tablespoons worth, which for more precise folks is 15g, and form it into a disc. Press into your tin and then use your thumb to push into the sides. Repeat for all 24 holes and then put the tin in your fridge to relax the pastry.

In the meantime make 24 discs of marzipan to eventually seal your little morsels. Again, use about 15g of marzipan. Remove the tin complete with pastry from the fridge, spoon a teaspoon of jam into each pastry lined hole.

Then top off with a disc of marzipan and use your thumb to squash down and seal each morsel. Repeat until the tin is full and then bake for about 20 minutes until the marzipan is starting to brown.

Remove. Leave to cool in the tin a little and then after about 10 minutes use a very sharp knife to eek them out by slipping it between the pastry and the tin. Just a slight poke should do. Cool completely on a wire rack and enjoy as many as you like if you’re not on a bloody diet like me.

A few months ago a strange urge came over me to learn to sew. I’m not talking furry pencil cases and cushions, I’m talking the real thing; dresses, jackets, maybe curtains if I fancied something easy. It couldn’t be that hard, my Nanna was a bespoke tailor(ess) so it’s in the blood you see.

20 hours of teaching and £170 on tuition and materials and I’m officially remedial when it comes to all things sewing related. Mr B had to thread the borrowed machine for me, I cut the sleeves of a babygro too short and the dress I’ve made gapes in some rather compromising areas, or maybe that’s the pregnancy induced gargantuan breasts? The borrowed sewing machine has gone back to the lovely Alison and I’ve instructed Mr B to stop me taking up any other craft related hobbies in future. My other Grandma taught me how to make a simple sponge cake, so sticking to what I know, here’s her recipe which is traditional and I think, foolproof. It also serves as a good thank you present for people who kindly lend you their sewing machine. Everyone loves a sponge after all.

Ingredients:

4 eggs

caster sugar, either white or golden

butter or marg at room temp (I carefully softened my butter in the microwave and managed not to create a swimming golden mess this time.)

Preheat the oven to Gas 4 and grease two sandwich tins with butter, then line with greaseproof paper. I bloody hate doing this but like a lot of boring things, it’s unfortunately essential.

Weigh the 4 eggs in their shells. make a note of the grams/oz. Then weigh out the same amount of flour, caster sugar and butter, keeping them all separate. Using a wooden spoon/hand held mixerstand mixer, cream together the butter and sugar until lighter in colour than when you started and creamy looking.

Beat the eggs for 2 mins and then add a little at a time to the mixture, beating as you add each dribble. Some people seem to be able to add more than a dribble and not end up with a curdled mixture, but not me. (If it does curdle add a couple of spoons of the flour and whizz together.) Continue adding the beaten eggs until they’re all whizzed into the mixture. Add the salt if you need it and also the flavouring, then fold in the flour using a metal spoon. Spoon into the two tins and smooth with a knife then cook in the middle of the oven for about 20 mins. The tops should be golden and springy when you touch them. Remove from the oven and pop on a wire rack for 5 mins, then de-tin them and leave to cool back on the rack.

Once cool you may need to carefully slice the peak off one of the cakes in order for the bottom sandwich to hold the filling and top cake ‘lid’ fit easily. Otherwise the top cake may balance in a precarious fashion. I ate the discarded lid of mine whilst standing next to the fridge and debating which jam to use. After some poor calculations I ended up using both strawberry and raspberry. So a straspberry filling I guess. I can reliably inform you you will need about half a regular jar of jam to fill a regular sized cake.

The recipe is foolproof (according to my Grandma) as you can scale up or down and the ratios always remain the same due to the weighing technique. I guess this method was used before eggs were sold in large, medium or small sizes. It tastes lovely made with some lemon zest and filled with lemon curd. Or fresh raspberries and whipped cream and very good too. I also like to use a tea strainer to add a dusting of icing sugar to the top. It hides a multitude of sins.

Holly Bell

I’m a mum of 3 boys, a cookbook writer and also a finalist on the 2011 Great British Bake Off.
I’ve decided to record the recipes I use, partly to save them somewhere and partly in case someone else might like to use them...
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